From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Oct 14 11:30:39 2004
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From: Omar Thameen
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Hotmail rendering of 7bit messages
Message-ID: <20041014183037.GA98595@biglist.com>
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Just today, we've gotten a couple reports from list owners about
Hotmail not displaying certain messages properly.
We've determined that this happens with text/plain messages which
are 7bit encoded, the symptoms being the display of characters
like "+ADw-". If you reload the page, about 50% of the time it
displays properly.
Are there any MSN admins on this list? Does anyone have any more
information about this phenomenon? Has Hotmail made some changes
in the last 24 hours?
Omar
From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Oct 14 22:16:30 2004
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Message-ID: <416EED9A.8070708@equinephotoart.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 14:20:26 -0700
From: JC Dill
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Subject: things that should be in the welcome message
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I recently had an unpleasant experience subscribing to a mailing list.
The list owner had configured the list to subscribe new users with a
variety of unusual settings. The welcome message mentioned some of
these settings, but not all, and it told how to change some of them, but
not all. Unfortunately, I wanted to change one of the settings that was
not adequately described, and trying to determine the correct format for
changing this setting was very difficult! The list owner's name and
email address (or list-owner alias) were not present in the welcome
letter, and the reply address for the welcome letter looked like it went
to the list *server* rather than to the list *owner* (although I later
learned that it did go to the owner). The list runs on a listserver
that I'm not familiar with, and trying to decipher the list server's
"help" messages was very frustrating. It took me over a dozen emails
back and forth with the list server and finally I had to go to a webpage
to get the list owner's email address to get help getting my
subscription properly configured to meet my needs.
The list owner claimed that there are no rules/standards/"laws" that
detail what should be included in the welcome message and thus no
obligation for the list owner to include the information I expected (how
to change the subscription to the "default" settings, how to contact the
list owner) in the welcome letter. I coulda swore I've seen list owner
standards outlined somewhere before! Am I confused? Is there a
standards document that outlines what should be in the welcome message
that is received when you subscribe to a list? Am I unreasonable to
expect that the welcome message at least include an email address (or
alias) for the list owner in the *body* of the message, or that the
message reply-to address clearly show that it goes to the owner (i.e.
listname-owner alias)? What about expecting clear instructions on how
to do something as basic as setting one's subscription to individual
emails instead of the list-default setting of mime-digest?
Thanks!
jc
From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Oct 15 07:59:21 2004
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Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 09:59:14 -0500
From: Paul Russell
Organization: University of Notre Dame
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To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: things that should be in the welcome message
References: <416EED9A.8070708@equinephotoart.com>
In-Reply-To: <416EED9A.8070708@equinephotoart.com>
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I am not aware of any standards, or even "best practices" documents regarding
welcome messages, and the default welcome message text in most MLM products
seems to have been written by MLM geeks for MLM geeks. In other words, it is
almost completely incomprehensible to normal humans.
I am the co-owner of a list for hi-ed email administrators, and we replaced
the default welcome message with one that appears to provide most of the
information that was missing from the message you received and does not
require a post-graduate degree in MLM Science for comprehension. The text
of our welcome message is appended below my signature.
--
Paul Russell
Senior Systems Administrator
OIT Messaging Services Team
University of Notre Dame
----- begin welcome message for HiEd-EmailAdmin list -----
Please save this message for future reference.
Welcome to the HIED-EMAILADMIN list. This list exists to facilitate
discussion about all aspects of email administration and management
in higher education environments. This includes, but is not limited
to: email platform/application, emerging email standards, mail flow,
unsolicited bulk or commercial email (spam), email viruses, account
management, email clients (both fat and thin), disaster recovery, and
email lists. The discussion will focus on these issues within a higher
education context. The primary audience is email administrators in
higher education, however, all members of the higher education community
are welcome to join the list.
The list is designed as a self-moderated discussion forum for
subscribers only; messages from other sources will be rejected.
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tolerated. Offenders may be placed on moderation or removed from
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is subject to the University's List Service Policies
.
To post a message to the list, send the message to
.
To contact the list owners, send an email message to
.
To leave the list, send an empty email message to
.
To manage your subscription options, send an email message to
with the appropriate command as the
only text in the body of the message, or use the web page at
.
To obtain a list of valid LISTSERV commands, including commands
for managing your subscription options, send an email message
to with the command 'info refcard'
(without the quotes) as the only text in the body of the message.
----- end -----
From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Oct 15 08:42:39 2004
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Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:42:51 +0100
From: lee
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To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: things that should be in the welcome message
References: <416EED9A.8070708@equinephotoart.com> <416FE5C2.6040109@nd.edu>
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I host a few lists on my install of the Mailgust MLM and take great care
in making sure that all necessary contact details and info are clear but
concise, both in the notification mails and right at the start where the
person usually first discovered the lists on the website.
I would suggest any list manager who does not use such common sense (and
especially, JC, takes the attitude you described as receiving) is
hosting a list not worth getting involved with in the first place.
lee
scanned by lee's virus software. outbound message found to be clean.
From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Oct 18 16:03:25 2004
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Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 19:03:23 -0400
From: Omar Thameen
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Hotmail rendering of 7bit messages
Message-ID: <20041018230323.GA91370@biglist.com>
References: <20041014183037.GA98595@biglist.com>
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If anyone cares, the problem was that the signature delimiting string
that we were using, "--+--" , was causing Hotmail display the message
with 7bit encoded characters, regardless the encoding defined in the
message headers.
Omar
On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 02:30:37PM -0400, Omar Thameen wrote:
> Just today, we've gotten a couple reports from list owners about
> Hotmail not displaying certain messages properly.
>
> We've determined that this happens with text/plain messages which
> are 7bit encoded, the symptoms being the display of characters
> like "+ADw-". If you reload the page, about 50% of the time it
> displays properly.
From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Oct 18 19:54:23 2004
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Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 19:54:18 -0700
From: "Roger B.A. Klorese"
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To: Omar Thameen
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Hotmail rendering of 7bit messages
References: <20041014183037.GA98595@biglist.com> <20041018230323.GA91370@biglist.com>
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Omar Thameen wrote:
> If anyone cares, the problem was that the signature delimiting string
> that we were using, "--+--" , was causing Hotmail display the message
> with 7bit encoded characters, regardless the encoding defined in the
> message headers.
Then perhaps you should actually use the RFC-compliant signature
delimiter, two dashes (-) followed by one space followed by a newline.
From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Mon Oct 18 21:14:34 2004
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Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:14:32 -0400
From: Omar Thameen
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Hotmail rendering of 7bit messages
Message-ID: <20041019041432.GA97866@biglist.com>
References: <20041014183037.GA98595@biglist.com> <20041018230323.GA91370@biglist.com> <417481DA.7050504@queernet.org>
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On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 07:54:18PM -0700, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote:
> Omar Thameen wrote:
> > If anyone cares, the problem was that the signature delimiting string
> > that we were using, "--+--" , was causing Hotmail display the message
> > with 7bit encoded characters, regardless the encoding defined in the
> > message headers.
>
> Then perhaps you should actually use the RFC-compliant signature
> delimiter, two dashes (-) followed by one space followed by a newline.
That's not a bad idea, though it doesn't excuse Hotmail's inability to
display the messages.
The problems I see are:
- I've only been able to find references to "-- " being a convention
stemming from usenet, not a requirement (RFC 2646, 3676).
- In practice, very few people/ISPs are using signatures so delimited.
- Though I did say "signature", I meant to refer to the mandatory
list unsubscribe information we append (which we want to strip
out for archives). Perhaps it's better called a "trailer", with
signatures remaining the superfluous information provided by the
poster.
Omar